Sportsaid Announces Young Athlete Support
UK charity SportsAid has confirmed funding for 1,432 of Britain’s best young athletes in 2012, with around 500 more expected to receive SportsAid Awards as the year progresses and additional sponsors are secured.
The funding will come as a boost for aspiring sportsmen and women throughout the UK who will be able to use their awards from SportsAid – which are typically £1,000 a year – to help them meet the cost of training and competing.
Research by SportsAid shows these costs to have risen more than 15% last year to an average of £6,438 per athlete.
One of the athletes to benefit from today’s announcement is rhythmic gymnast Lynne Hutchison who learned in March that her team will be competing at the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Lynne said: ‘SportsAid has supported me since 2008 when I first thought competing at the Olympics could be possible and apart from my money from SportsAid my team and I have been completely self-funded, so it really has helped having their support.’
‘We are now preparing for the European Championships which will be held in Russia which is the biggest event before the Games, and now that we are clear of what we are working towards we are working extremely hard, and I’m extremely excited!’
Making the announcement today, SportsAid’s chief executive Tim Lawler added: ‘We are proud to support the next generation of British sports stars and I would like to thank all our partners, donors and fundraisers for the support that makes this possible.’
‘We help athletes from 75 disciplines including Olympic, Paralympic and other sports and because it is the sports’ governing bodies who tell us which athletes to support, we ensure the right people are helped at the right time.’
‘We saw the impact of this at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 which were the most successful in SportsAid’s 36-year history, with 18 of Great Britain’s 19 gold medals going to athletes who have received support from the charity. This year, in our ninth Olympic cycle, we anticipate one in every two athletes in Team GB and an even greater proportion of the ParalympicsGB team to have received SportsAid’s support, so we are hoping for an even better result at London 2012.’
So far, 35 of the 59 athletes confirmed for Team GB and nine of the 13 athletes confirmed for the ParalympicsGB team for London 2012 are SportsAid athletes or alumni.
